LGBTQ+ Poem: #514 Shapeshifting, by Ashlee-Ann Sneller

I can’t remember when we met,
but I’m glad that we did. I do remember
making mud pies together in the garden;
playing kiss and tell and writing
the answers with dirt on one another’s
backs.

Puberty is a cat
sneaking up on its prey, and
my breasts fluttered into being
in a blink. I know
I was jealous of your boobs first.
How they sat like soft-serve ice creams,
waiting, speaking to me in tongues.

In college I kissed a girl
but it didn’t feel like I thought it would.
I thought from then on
that maybe my body was only
meant for men seeking an ocean.

I can tell you friendship
is a strange moving thing,
a buoyant shapeshifter and I’m still,
it seems, a curious maker of mud pies.
The first and last time I tasted her
we were adults, bodies both
a seashore and seabed.

And yet, somehow
she was also tart peonies in summer,
taking me back to the garden,
to the way we so carelessly
touched and laughed. It was so
easy.

Realisation was like
rubbing grains of sand off your hands,
stepping into the dairy to buy ice-creams
and being happy to know
you’ll love any flavour.